The Terror Within II (1991)

You would think that if there was one person left in a world devastated by plague and ruled by perverted genetic mutant monsters who would understand how to take care of his business, it would be David Pennington (Andrews Stevens). David is a scientist who back in The Terror Within watched in horror as his friends were slaughtered by these monsters, had his woman raped and impregnated by them, and saw that the babies the creatures make grow to adulthood in about ten minutes, ready to start the killing and raping cycle all over again. David even saw his best friend, Butch the Dog, almost killed by these things!

So when he runs into the exact same situations in The Terror Within II, he’s always one step ahead of the monsters, saves his friends, his old lady, and even Butch the Dog, right? No, he pretty much lets it all happen again, acting like he wasn’t the guy who blew up the Mojave Lab along with a bunch of these monsters at the end of the first movie!

It would be easy (and probably accurate) for star Andrew Stevens to blame the writer and director for his character’s sudden bout of selective amnesia, but he was the writer and director! He hews extremely close to the classic The Terror Within formula that almost none of us remember from the single movie that preceded this one, but ramps up the quota of stupid to World War III levels!

Remember how he survived with a woman at the end of the first movie? She’s gone! He mumbles something to his new girlfriend about how she died in the desert!

Sure, she died but you and your dog survived? Are you sure you didn’t accidentally let loose with your crossbow on her so that you could be available for a new love interest in this movie, Andrew?

It’s clear though that Andrew’s crude storytelling abilities extends to character development as well. There’s a great scene where he and this girl he rescued out in the wastelands are sitting around the fire and he goes into “haunted hero” mode. This means he suddenly doesn’t know how to act around a woman and says stuff like “I’ve changed.”

Sure, but your pecker still works, right? It turns out that it sure does because the next morning, his old lady announces she’s pregnant! How does she know after only one night with this guy? She just does! And she’s right! Worst girlfriend in the history of the world! And most fertile!

But it isn’t just because he babbles about two lines of world weary dialogue that we know David is tormented by what has happened to him in The Terror Within. We also know because of the absolutely ridiculous beard he’s sporting!

It’s a long, straight, stringy thing that’s clearly glued on and has this junior Moses look to it! Normally, it would easily sashay home with “worst use of fake hair” honors, but The Terror Within II is all about being doubly bad!

So it is that David’s ZZ Top beard has to compete with the multicolored hairpiece and facial hair worn by R. Lee Ermey! David’s really looks the worst, but he cuts it off after knocking up his girlfriend while R. Lee (Endless Descent) insists on wearing his furry get up for the whole film!

R. Lee is in charge of the Rocky Mountain Lab which is where David is headed. David is collecting ingredients for a vaccine that will be used to treat the people at the lab who are coming down with some illness or other.

I’m not sure if this was related to the work David and his old friends never seemed to get around to doing at the Mojave Lab since no one in that lab ever got sick or even worried about it, but it gives David a reason to go out wandering around picking up chicks and getting bushwhacked by monster-worshipping cults!

David and his pregnant girlfriend arrive at the Rocky Mountain Lab and when it becomes apparent that her child is a monster, she’s taken to the medical bay where she pops the nasty thing out. David is present during this and since he saw this happen before, he immediately incinerates the abomination, right?

Heck no! They put it in an incubator and run out of the room to go fight with another monster that has also just turned up on the loose! This second monster has regenerated itself from a single severed finger one of the lab morons was studying, but apparently forgot to look at for about a month!

Guess what happens by the time David and crew manage to saunter back to the medical facility? Monster gone! Full grown! Air shaft! Damn, but that sounds familiar!

Flare guns, a stun gun, homemade flame thrower, and David’s trusty dog whistle are broken out! Everyone is paired off into teams! Levels are assigned to be patrolled! People get picked off by the two monsters!

One broad even does the smart thing and traps herself in an incinerator and just before she has R. Lee vaporize her, she gives the monster trying to break into the incinerator the finger! F-U, scumbag! I’m all vaporized and you’re still, uh, still out terrorizing everyone else!

Isn’t the whole point of the suicide option to take the bad guys with you? If you’re going to take the easy way, why not open the doors and let the monster inside and have R. Lee do you both?

David ends up having to square off against the monster that he’s sort of the father of which results in the awesome line, “come to papa!” right before he shoots at the thing! Don’t worry though, it ended up taking a long pole, a knife, and some duct tape to finally dispatch the big, gooey bastard. But not before his “mom” tried to talk some sense into him.

Not content with the “come to papa” line, after his old lady says something about how the monster sensed they had some kind of connection, David jokes that he must take after her side of the family! In a movie where a guy didn’t fall on a cactus full of tarantulas, that surely would’ve have been the funniest moment!